


The Bet

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: A Soldier Familiar With Defeat [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon Age: Origins Quest - The Landsmeet, Gen, M/M, Male Warden/Sten and Male Warden/Zev are canon for this continuity, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: It’s not that Mateu doesn’t care what Alistair thinks, it’s not that he doesn’t understand how much has already happened -Wait, stop.You’re not giving him time to think.
Relationships: Alistair/Male Warden (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai/Male Warden
Series: A Soldier Familiar With Defeat [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582234
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The Bet

He hadn’t decided until the moment of the thing. Not really. He suspected that this fact, this hiding from his own decision, would preclude him ever considering it heroic or really admirable in his own view.

He was not there to be a hero. He was there to do his job, and no Warden should confuse his job with some shining ideal of being a hero. After living through a Blight, it shouldn’t even be possible.

But what decided him: they might not any of them live through the Blight. And who would live would not be decided by their moral standing. So why would he, how could he, he’d taken on too many doomed missions already - be crueler than the Maker?

“- No.” He sighed out the word. “No.”

He let down his hand to the man kneeling before him. After a pause, the man reached up to take it, looking at him through a fall of dark and silvered hair, eyes as unreadable in their exhaustion as river rocks.

“I can,” his second-in-command said. He had his sword half out of its sheath. Mateu doubted he’d left his hand far from it at any point during the preceding duel. “Just step aside.”  
The man on his knees let his hand start to drop. Had he a pardon, or had he not? What he still had, obviously, was his pride. 

He looked at his second. His second-should-have-been-first. His second-should-have-had-this, but damn it, Mateu should have known the decision he would make before he entered the hall of the Landsmeet. (He likely would have, if he’d realized that a political solution would come through steel, as it often did, but that coming through steel it would all be so neat). And he hadn’t blamed Alistair for evading the honor of taking the title Warden-Commander, he couldn’t go back and retroactively blame him now. “No. There has to be -.”

He’d have lit on the solution eventually. He’d applied it so comprehensively before, after all. 

Riordan made his way forward through the crowd. It had fallen quiet enough that he could do so by a few small twists and turns, and Mateu himself was surprised to see him after he had kept his own silence during Loghain’s trial. “The Wardens turn away none.” His eyes were kind. Mateu had known him, known of him, and trained under him. Still his forgiveness surprised him. Well, Riordan had never been a Ferelden Warden. And Mateu hadn’t been - wasn’t - Orlesian. This didn’t mean that they had less to forgive the Regent for. Wardens were brothers across borders. Mateu didn’t expect the Fereldan noblefolk to understand that, because he himself no longer felt that he belonged as much to Riordan as he did to the people he’d meet since coming to Ostagar.

Still, the ideal of what Wardens ought to value and why was often lost on the nobles of any country. As early as that distinction had been lost, many others were now joining it in falling to darkspawn blades, which would eventually bring them ‘round again to being brothers in arms. That was -

‘The nice thing about a Blight is how it brings everyone together.’ The smiling young man that Mateu had met at Ostagar was not with him on the Landsmeet floor.

Mateu reached his hand down, as Loghain Mac Tir let his fall, to grip it, and hauled him up.

“Mac Tir,” Mateu said, trying to keep Alistair out of his field of view. “What do you think of joining the very order that you’ve tried so hard to dismantle?”

The former Regent of Fereldan, Loghain Mac Tir, rolled his shoulders slightly. “I - did not think that I would be offered a - role in the defense of Denerim. Thank you.” It was like trying to pry some valuable ore out of pig iron. Was Mateu the smith, or was Loghain himself?

Mateu closed his eyes for a moment. It felt like a long time to him, but he knew that his mask - his shield - was still up. “Don’t thank me.”

Alistair dug his toes through his boots into the ground. Like he was on a battleground, not in the seat of his nation’s power. “Joining the Wardens is an honor, not a punishment! Name him a Warden and you cheapen us all! I will not stand next to him as a brother, I won’t!”

Anora padded up behind Mateu and Alistair, like a fencer or like a wary housecat. He was aware of her more by his fighter’s instinct for people behind him and less by her bright silks. “He’s being childish. How many generals do you think Fereldan has? We can’t afford to lose any of them to Alistair’s tantrums if we want to survive the Blight.”

Alistair turned on her. “Oh, but we could afford to lose a king?” Voice rising to the rafters like he’d been born to this. Once, Alistair’s fear and shame over his role as the unwanted royal son had dogged at Mateu as it had dogged at Alistair. He would have given quite a bit to see Alistair comfortable in the royal palace.

Not like this.

This would not end well. Mateu’s skin crawled. Loghain’s weary basilisk gaze made the crawling sensation worse.

“And the entire army that was abandoned at Ostagar? Whose tantrums cost us all that, I wonder?”

“A man who’s already declared that he intends to make amends.” Mateu didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t want to fight with Alistair in front of the frightened nobles of an already-fractured nation.

“And this matters now?” Alistair asked in disbelief. “Now, when he doesn’t have the power to make amends?”

Anora’s blue eyes glittered. “He could have -”

“Everyone has the power to make a difference. - Alistair.” Trying hard not to let his voice turn pleading. “You got here with a witch, and a dog, and me. Can you really say that only those with titles can make a difference in a Blight?”

Alistair’s lips were still twisted in despairing insult. He met Mateu’s eyes for a long moment. “You can have me on the wall with you, or you can have him.”

No one - not the groundlings or the Wardens or the minor nobility - stood in the way of Senior Warden Alistair as he turned on his heel and left the long, high hall. Anora stared at Mateu’s back. Loghain’s eyelids moved slightly as if to follow Alistair, but conscious of his image, too, he didn’t turn away from Mateu. Mateu stared unhappily in Loghain’ general direction. He wondered what any of it looked like from the nobles’ position up on the wall.

“Congratulations,” Morrigan said wryly. The witch of the wilds had draped herself in the silken and painted skins of this new pack. It looked heavy on her. Even if she’d wanted this. Well, Mateu had wanted this in the sense of wanting to be the one left standing. He had what he wanted, and he was none the happier for it. “We have the crown, yet no head to put it on. Well. Perhaps it’s better this way, it would have been too heavy for him.” Her voice went a little high as the Regent and his daughter and Riordan all looked at her, her calligraphed eyebrows pressing together.

“We still have a royal,” Mateu said, looking to Anora.

“Yes.”

*

“If you want someone tracked down,” Zevran said from his lean against the doorframe. He was a shadow facing a dark room before the remnants of light washing across the stone walls of the corridor. Still, he was a comfort.

“I want a lot of things,” Mateu said, looking at his toes instead of at Zev. He was in a stretch, arm holding the sole of his foot. It wasn’t working to pull the knot out from between his shoulders. “I don’t think that’s going to resolve any of them.”

From where he was on the floor, Mateu couldn’t see Zevran roll his eyes. “Yes. Because our senior Warden going into grief before the darkspawn even arrive is a - trivial issue.” He came into the room and sat down sole to sole in front of Mateu so that his friend and lover could no longer avoid looking at him. In his soft leathers and linen he looked tired and almost like a stranger. Of course a stranger Mat was happy to see, but - something dragged downwards in his stomach at the thought that Zev, too, might be looking for comfort.

“I’m not.” Mat dragged a hand down over his face. “I’m not giving up. I’m still a Warden, and this is barely a Blight.”

Zevran shifted to lie on his stomach, hands laced together under his chin. "Oh? It has seemed an awful lot like a Blight to me. Loghain must be so relieved to hear that he hasn't been talking completely out of his ass."

"I'm not forgiving him. Do you think I don't have reason to hate him too? I was a Warden before Ostagar."

"I know. But you don't really have to forgive him to get the Bannorn behind you."

"That's not why I'm doing it."

While Zevran's eyes were soft in the candlelight, what he said was, "you won't be able to bring everyone through this fight."

And then Mateu lied to the oldest-closest friend he still had with him. "I will." Another roil in his stomach as Protection, quiet as if they’d suffered a mortal wound at Alistair's departure, roused a little, like putting their shoulder to his and pushing forward.

Zevran's expression shifted. Relief. Mateu was too tired to feel much guilt, and Protection had meant it.

*

The south was much less exhausting when everyone else around was asleep. Sten of the Beresaad hoped that the kitchen was abandoned, too. It hadn’t been the case in Redcliffe, where a sleepy cook and her - apprentice? Helper? had been tucking food away and cleaning. He felt naked without Asala, but. When Mateu wanted something from him, it was very difficult to disobey. When Arainai wanted something from him, the results of disobeying were often very annoying. As a result, Asala was bound and hidden between his bedroll, and he was unarmed to preserve southern sensibilities.

The kitchen was not abandoned. He hovered outside of the lowly-lit, low, warm room, thinking of being by the hearth, thinking of the night sky outside his window, thinking of the low clouds on the horizon. Wondering if Mateu was thinking of Alistair. Only for a moment, of course, but one of the little humans in the room turned and looked at him. “Edie!”

Sten reluctantly stepped into the kitchen, waiting to be taken to task by whoever ‘Edie’ was. Unsurprisingly Edie was the cook; and sometimes the south had Roles the way it accused the Qun of having. Edie was a middle-aged human woman who seemed unimpressed with him. “Oh. You’re one of the Wardens, aren’t you?”

Yes and no. “I’m with them.”

“Hm. Dark days, to be sure. - Come, come, sit here.” He follows her to a stool by the massive table and sits. She goes to one of the hearths and takes down an iron container wrought to look like a long pitcher plant. He wondered where its smith had found his inspiration; had he read it in a book, had he reinvented it from some sort of dream? Edie selected a stone mug and poured tea into it from the iron plant, before pushing it towards him. “Were you at Ostagar?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She poured herself tea before hanging up the pot. “I’ve wondered, you know. The Regent isn’t a stranger to Denerim, for all that he spent enough time at his own estate before Cailan’s disappearance and after Maric took the throne, not that that wasn’t a time with its own growing pains.” She sighed over her tea, leaning her elbows on the table. Sten stared at her in bemusement. Was he - supposed to offer her comfort?

“Anyway, I wondered if he changed because Cailan died - giving him custody of the country twice, you know, even if the first time wasn’t exactly official - or because. Well. The rumors had already started, although I tell you, if he really wanted power -”

“Why did Cailan ever reach the throne, hm? Or at least - how is it that once he has, everyone seems to like him better. If the Regent was the power behind the throne more than once before Cailan had established himself - well.”

“Well, no one suspected anything like that!” Edie said in surprise, turning towards one of the many cabinets lining the wall. Perched on it was Zevran, heels up on the soapstone. 

“Never mind him,” Sten said. “You don’t have to get him tea, either.”

“Oh yes, please do, though.”

Edie sighed - a theatrical put-upon sigh - and got up again, getting up the tea. “With the Wardens, too, I presume?”

“Oh yes.” Zevran pulled up a seat much closer to Sten than strictly necessary, and then Sten wondered why it even occurred to him. “Sten, this scandal cannot stand.”

“I’m working on it. I’m working on it by killing this stupid dragon and going back somewhere sensible.”

“Well, yes, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sten. Sten. You can’t not care that Mateu had his heart broken.”

Sten’s hand tightened around his mug. “He will get over it.”

Zev rapped his knuckles against Sten’s shoulder. “Sten! I know you care more than - . Anyway, you do realize that Mat entering a heartbroken slump will do us no favors as we attempt to survive the upcoming apocalypse, hm?”

“And how can we fix that?” Sten ignored how Edie was very, very, very slowly pouring another cup of tea while eavesdropping on them. “Even if we do drag him back - and I wouldn’t mind - we’d just be bringing him more of a distraction.”

“People can, on occasion, change their minds. I know that this isn’t a secret that the Qun has yet discovered.”

“Do you intend to hold him at daggerpoint until he changes his mind?”

“It’ll be too obvious if I intervene.”

“Or too effective? Given that if he’s waiting for anyone, - it’s Mateu. Not you. But he may be waiting for you, too.”

Zevran fell uncharacteristically silent. Edie swooped in at the pause to place Zevran's tea between them, already colder than Sten's had been when he'd received it. "I can't promise him anything that Mateu hasn't."

"And neither can I. I care nothing for this teyrn of yours, but - how is it a surprise that I take Mateu's word seriously?"

"So do I, I'm not telling you to lie to Alistair. If that's what I wanted, I'd do it myself." The lines on his face, so oddly appropriate in this language, deepened. Maybe it would be motivation enough to net Sten into this to avoid doing so. "No. We just have to stymie him for a bit."

"If you wanted to place a large boulder on his path, you could have asked Shale to help."

"Oh, no. He'd just run around them."

*

Alistair was still used to the life of a fugitive. The oh-so-tragic Regent (may the Maker piss on him and Mat both) had made sure of that. He’d had made sure! that he (and Mat) could rarely spend long in even common roadhouses, converted from barns or community houses, as they went from community to community. 

The bustling and begrimed little caravanserai by one of the great gates into and out of Denerim proper felt familiar, not strange, as he made his way through the crowd outside the front doors. The glares were familiar too, he snarled to himself. In actuality this open consideration was leavened with too much fear; the palace district was swarming, and now a Grey Warden was walking the streets? While Alistair couldn’t be said to take advantage of this reaction, it preserved his hurt dignity as he made his way to the counter inside, sat heavily, and raised a finger.

The woman behind the bar stared at him. It wasn’t the jaded stare of her profession. It didn’t turn Alistair into some curious temporary flotsam that she’d found on the beach or under her shoe during her morning walk. It said that there had been a flood, or that she was wondering what she had done to get herself in over her head, and that he was the shark in the deeps with her. He didn’t notice. “One ale, please.” He knew that the coin would feel greasy to his fingers. Spend it, keep it, throw it? Well, he’d never been a noble nor had he ever been truly destitute. He didn’t know why his own portion of gold felt like his weight in the stuff. He knew that Mat wouldn’t really begrudge him it …

“Of course. In defeat you sulk, and apparently, in victory as well.”

Alistair practically snorted the ale he had brought to his lip. “- Desolate Void, Sten - What, did Mac Tir kick you out too?”

“Do you think I give a fuck about Loghain Mac Tir?” Sten pulled up a chair without waiting to be asked. Alistair was uncertain if he’d deign to offer it anyway. “No.” He reached for Alistair’s drink. Alistair frowned. Sten quirked his platinum-silver eyebrows, continued to reach for the drink. At least he restrained himself to only drinking a third before setting it back down.

“Has he asked for me?” His voice was much smaller than he would have liked.

“No.” Sten stared through Alistair as if he was one of their practice dummies. Sten would probably agree with half of that sentiment, if Alistair let those thoughts out. “As far as he is aware, you’re still on the road to Weisshaupt.”

Was Alistair waiting to see if Mat would chase after him? Of course he was, not that he’d admit it. “Well. I will be. Just, needed some food for the road. Liquid courage for the road, too. That sort of thing. It wouldn’t be very dignified for a Warden to keel over into the ditch just because.” His throat started to close up. He grabbed his drink, and swiped his sleeve along the lip of it before inhaling. Sputtering. His eyes had begun to smart.

“Is it dignified for a Warden to abandon the road when his commander makes a decision he, personally, doesn’t agree with?”

“Is it dignified for a Warden to - to - to roll over for the man who - ?”

“Was it right for him to spare a murderer, then?”

Alistair’s first response was an explosive ‘YES!’ which he only trapped at the last minute. Sten’s eyes on his were knowing and sour. He didn’t want to antagonize apparently his only friend after the scene he’d caused at the Landsmeet, but at the thought of listening to anyone else bemoan this - “Yes.”

(Yes, he gave himself too much credit for the magnitude of the scene that arose from dethroning the Regent.)

Sten raised a hand. “Bartender, several more, please. Something sweet, if Denerim has it.”

“Mead,” Alistair muttered into his own drink.

“I can remember our previous conversations,” he said archly. Of course. He wasn’t here to wait on Alistair, it was supposed to be the other way around.

Alistair eventually broke at the heavy silence in their fraught little island of improbability. The disgraced Warden and the warrior of the Qun. They no longer had to hide, but this wasn’t a celebration. “Look, are you - trying to tree me? Is that what this is? You’re keeping me here until someone shows up to talk some sense into me?”

“Do you expect to talk sense into Mateu?”

“No.”

Sten straightened slightly the way he did when he saw a gap in someone’s guard. “I have a deal. You will take it, because you are sitting here trying to drown yourself anyway.”

“What’s this deal that I’m going to take, then?”

“We’re going to play a game of Nult-dra.”

Alistair groaned loudly. “Oh, great. So I’m already going to lose. What happens when that inevitably happens, hm?”

“Why are you so defeatist, Alistair? Haven’t you made it this far?” His smile was unpleasant. His eyes were hard and he was carrying some stress at the corners of them which Alistair had just noticed, where his pale eyelashes trailed off into fine wrinkles.

“I know you fight dirty.”

“Only with Mateu,” he said in a low ambiguous tone.

Alistair pushed back from the bar, balancing his hands against the sodden wood. Holding for the moment the idea of getting up and leaving. “And if I win?”

“I leave, and I don’t tell Mateu where I saw you last.”

“And if you win?”

“You come back, and you stand with us against the darkspawn.” Like you promised you would. But he hadn’t promised Sten, and he hadn’t even promised Mateu, Duncan hadn’t chosen Mateu …

Alistair waved a hand in defeat. Alright, I’ll play. “Alright, I’ll play.”

*

What, would Alistair have won the complex foreign game if he’d believed he could? Maybe. Did he even want to?

*

“You’re drunk,” Sten told him.

“Shuddup.”

“You know, you would have done better if you hadn’t been drinking throughout.”

“Nooo, because I’m terrible, I’m a terrible Warden, I can’t even finish a game of.” He held up a small teak token. “Weird wooden lumps?”

Sten sighed heavily. “Alright, up.”

Alistair rallied his strength from some reserve unknown even to him. Peeled his forehead off the counter and rubbed the back of his hand over the indent. “No. I’ll walk back on my own.”

Sten searched his face. It wasn’t resignation, but some kind of shame, that kept him from pushing the point; even if the point had already been conceded. “It is not so long until dawn. Not with how little time you’ve been putting into -.” He cut himself off with a huff. “Sobering up.”

“I’ll be there,” Alistair said, returning to his drink.

*

“We can’t wait,” Riordan said. “I’m sorry, but you know we can’t.”

Loghain waited at the door, watching rather blankly some point in the center of the room. Mateu didn’t know if he knew that seeing him, Loghain, made Mateu’s skin crawl. He had a hard time believing that Loghain expected him to simply. Accept him, as one of his recruits, as if nothing had ever -

Mateu could only conclude after this festering sore of a Blight that Loghain himself had made enough decisions out of spite.

Zevran was, of course, already in the room. He’d left very early, to avoid any risk of the servants finding them not just sharing a room but a bed. Mateu imagined he’d left some deeply charmed scullery maids behind in the process of fetching their breakfast. He hoped so. Zevran would be flattered. He was perched on the windowsill, hiding his expression from Riordan - and Mateu - behind a steaming cup of tea.

“Well,” Mateu said, throat tight, as he continued to gather his belongings from the room. Most of them were still in his saddlebags on Yaren in the stables. It was taking longer than he was used to. Maker, he was a person again. He had rank, he didn’t have to hide his title, and while this would be a hard and hurried march towards the darkspawn, it wouldn’t be fleeing his fellow man. 

“Wardens are in rather low supply this year,” Zevran said. “You must have planted early. Do we really want to let one escape, now that we’ve finally all decided that we give a damn about the darkspawn? Excuse my Orlesian.”

“As far as I saw,” Loghain said, “he lost himself.”

“Affter he lost all his brothers in arms - yes, all of them, we hadn’t - which is whose fault? - who can blame him?”

Loghain’s eyes were solemn and serious. He inclined his head as if to say that he hadn’t been contesting that particular point, but that he had the sense not to defend himself.

“He can’t have got far,” Zevran said. “And I’m very good at finding men who don’t want to be found. Even in this backwater mudhole.” He smiled thinly and unpleasantly. He lowered his tea so that they could appreciate the effect.

Riordan looked uncomfortable. Mateu had a sudden pang of sympathy for the man in the face of all the politicking he’d inevitably gone through to reach this point, this point of relative peace. Mateu’s victory over Loghain in the Landsmeet’s name had on balance made Riordan’s job easier, and no Senior Warden would be entirely unused to interpersonal pettiness. Still.  
“- You’re right. We don’t have the time.” And they didn’t have the time for Mateu to make up his mind as to whether he wanted to chase down Alistair and confront him. “He’ll know where to find us if he -. Wants to rejoin the Wardens.” Wants to return to me.

“I don’t imagine that it will take very long,” Riordan said in a pained attempt at consolation. “Being a Warden is forever.”

*

They left through the front gates. It felt a little like they’d successfully stolen his honor back. For a time, before the Wardens, leaving under the cover of night had made a more welcoming prospect. No. This time they were leaving at dawn, at the first light of day, Mateu in the parade regalia that Anora had commissioned for him.

Everything nice about this just highlighted what it had cost.

Alistair hadn’t come back. Could he, when it was all said and done? If Mateu was still alive? With no part of his survival, come if it would, owed to Alistair’s efforts -. Mateu’s throat closed with an unexpected rage.

"You know," Riordan said, on his charger next to Mateu. "I imagine this will give the people some comfort. I don't really know what it was like to live under Cailan's reign, but he was well-loved. Sometimes the pomp is justified." He gave Mateu a shallow little smile. An earnest smile. “Sometimes you have to celebrate when you can.”

What would Riordan have said if it had been Maric’s other son riding beside him, golden and nut-brown in the sunlight?

How would he himself feel if Alistair was laughing beside him? It hurt too much to think about.

And so, he didn’t notice how Sten stared in frustration, even turning his shoulders to buy his eyes another moment, as they passed a run-down little tavern by the front gates. The Soapy Rooster. He recognized -  
no one there.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, we still love Alistair.


End file.
